Script

Welcome to Proof of Stupidity, the show where we talk about the most revolutionary ideas and events in the blockchain space. Today we’re going to talk about the recent tweet from Walton that is stirring up all sorts of controversy. Let’s have a look at that tweet:

This came from the official Waltonchain Twitter following a Valentine’s competition that they themselves hosted. Now some folks out there are saying they rigged the competition because of the implicit assumption that they had fake accounts and just forgot to switch prior to making the tweet, but these folks just don’t understand how random number generators work so let me enlighten you.

Random number generators generate numbers pseudo-randomly because true randomness is not possible. Ergo, it’s possible that theoretically the random number generator could have selected Waltonchain themselves because there’s no way to limit the criteria of what would be a valid selection as then it wouldn’t be random anymore right?

This also perfectly explains why most of the winners didn’t follow the competition rules because if we think about the size of sample universe A, where entrants don’t follow the rules and sample universe B, where the entrants do follow the rules, it makes a lot of sense that sample universe A would be larger and since a random number generator can never be made to only select from specific sample universe, it makes sense that most of the winners were from sample universe A where they didn’t follow the rules.

Now up until this point, you might be thinking I’m pulling this information out of thin air but Waltonchain themselves have proven empirically that this is exactly what happened. Here’s a clip from their Instagram which illustrates that (clip shown here).

After seeing that clip, most of you have probably come to realize that there’s nothing Walton could have done to prevent this situation. So I want to imagine if you were in their shoes and your random number generator, against your desired intent (just because it’s random), selected one of your employees who just also happens to have access to the company Twitter. In fact, I want you to imagine if you’re that employee yourself – Do you want to seem ungrateful that you won just because it’s not ideal? The company could fire you if you won their competition and then didn’t seem grateful.

So the PR manager did what any rational human being would do in such a situation and decided to post that Tweet to show that they were grateful for winning that $40 worth of Walton. Some of you might be wondering why the PR manager posted on Walton’s official account rather than his own and there’s really no elaborate answer here, it’s actually quite simple: He only has a Snapchat, but the competition was for Twitter. What’s he gonna do, post a Snap about a Twitter competition? That would be an even worse blunder for their PR manager.

Unfortunately, most investors aren’t sophisticated enough to understand how random number generators actually work under the hood so they hastily came to the conclusion that the competition was rigged. As such, Walton sold off and we saw a loss in market cap of around $100 million dollars at peak.

Now that you’ve watched to this point in the video, you have a better grasp of what really happened. But I don’t this is the full story... I think this was all planned by their marketing experts – In other words, they’re so smart that they figured out that most people wouldn’t be smart enough to understand what actually happened so they decided to stage this whole event to get more publicity for their product and to buy-back some of their own tokens for a cheaper price.

I know that sounds absurd, but take a moment and think about it. What is the likelihood that the general public is going to understand that you can’t limit the sample universe for a random number generator? … I mean that’s such an absurd idea.

I guarantee you they knew most wouldn’t understand this and posted the competition anyway in hopes that something like this would happen. I say in hopes because there was no certainty that the random number generator would pick one of their employees because it’s random, but it did and they were prepared to capitalize on that situation.

I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Walton’s cunning and while it may seem questionable on an ethical front, this is the kind of brilliance I aim to cover in this series. So while this episode may be slightly different from the others in the sense that we focused more on Walton’s marketing department rather than their product, the actions behind this tweet clearly have implications on the overall strength of their entire team and I look forward to the future for Walton.

I hope you all enjoyed this episode of Proof of Stupidity – What should I explore next time?